Re: What the fuck is wrong with Wisconsin?

Was putting Paul Ryan on his ticket Mitt Romney’s way to harness the power of the tea party?

Many liberals seem to think so.

“Ryan, tea party a match made in heaven,” declared a Huffington Post headline on Monday. Dan Payne, a former Democratic strategist who now writes a political column for WBUR, a Boston NPR affiliate, called Ryan’s selection a “triumph of the tea party.”

A recent CNN poll also found that 87 percent of self-identified tea partyers in Wisconsin approve of Ryan.

As I looked at that number, however, I suspected that it likely does not accurately reflect the feelings of the most committed tea party members, many of whom are devout libertarians.

After all, Ryan voted for the PATRIOT Act, which civil libertarians abhor. He also voted for Medicare Part D, a costly prescription drug benefit pushed by the Bush administration. More recently, he voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, popularly referred to as the “bank bailout,” which struck at the very heart of the principle of the free market.

Furthermore, Ryan has not gone to great lengths to attach himself to the tea party brand. He -- like the six other Wisconsin Republicans in Congress -- is not a member of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus.

Jake Speed, the head of the La Crosse Tea Party, thinks very little of Ryan.

“I’m not a big fan because of the fact that he voted for stimulus, he voted for bailouts, he doesn’t want to balance the budget for 28 years,” says the 53-year-old small business owner, who identifies himself with what he calls the “liberty-minded” faction of the tea party movement, as opposed to those who are more accepting of foreign intervention and some curbs on civil liberties.

Patricia Kohlman, head of the Manitowoc County TEA Movement, calls Ryan an “OK” candidate. Like Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent, Kohlman would have preferred Allen West, a bombastic Florida congressman who, among other things, has alleged that “78 to 81 Democrats” in Congress are communists.

“(Ryan) has been out there (in Washington) too long. Who knows what (establishment Republicans) have talked him into?” she worries.

Ryan, she says, went along with many flawed Bush administration policies, including the creation of Medicare Part D.

Tim Dake, of the Milwaukee-area GrandSons of Liberty, calls the PATRIOT Act, which Ryan voted for on multiple occasions, “the worst infringement of civil liberties in 100 years.”

He also believes Ryan is -- like Bush -- too soft on illegal immigration.

However, Dake says he believes most tea partyers he knows will “hold their nose” and vote for the Republican ticket as part of what he calls “an incremental approach” to remaking government in the tea party’s image.

When I pointed out the criticism of Ryan made by Speed, the La Crosse tea partyer, Murphy dismissed Speed as a “Democrat in disguise” and the La Crosse Tea Party as a “fake tea party group.”

Murphy claims activists like Speed have infiltrated the tea party in order to cause disruption and even co-opt the organization, in the same way he says legendary left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky gained control over conservative organizations, including churches, as part of his battle for a popular uprising.

Unsurprisingly, Speed calls Murphy’s allegations hogwash.

“These people are a bunch of clowns,” he says, dismissing Murphy as a member of the “establishment wing of the Republican Party.”

Matt Batzel, executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of American Majority, a national group that trains conservative activists to run for office, says opinion on Ryan is predictably diverse.

“The tea party movement is a very large movement -- you have a lot of libertarians, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives,” he says. “I think a lot of people would want something more aggressive than Ryan, but I think most folks realize he is a good spokesman for reforming major entitlement programs.”

Re: What the fuck is wrong with Wisconsin?

Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2012 12:42 pm

by David R. Modny

Ryan stumping in Florida today with his own granny...and still repeating the "716 million dollar gutting," yet *Ryan budget supported*, Medicare Advantage lie. I thought the GOP were "supposed" to be all about wasteful spending/fraud reduction? Apparently, only if it's the non-existent type of "voter fraud" in PA.

I guess it's still the old adage...tell a lie enough and (hope) it will eventually stick.

Re: What the fuck is wrong with Wisconsin?

GM stopped production at its Janesville, Wisconsin production facility in 2008, when George W. Bush was still president, but according to Paul Ryan the person to blame is President Obama.

As you can see in the video at the top of the post, Ryan told a crowd in North Canton, Ohio yesterday that the president's energy policies had led to the factory's closure in 2009. Ryan delivered the attack in personal terms, saying he had high school buddies who worked at the factory. "A lot of my high school buddies worked at that GM plant," Ryan said. "One of the reasons that plant got shut down is $4 gasoline. You see, this costs jobs. The president's terrible energy policies are costing us jobs."

But despite Ryan's emotional story, GM announced the plant's closure in June of 2008. In October of 2008, the date was accelerated from 2010 to the end of the year. And on December 23, 2008 the last SUV rolled off the line.

Ryan said the factory closed because gas prices had climbed to $4 per gallon. Gas prices were that high, but that was in June of 2008, when George W. Bush was the president. Gas prices today are lower than they were then, though they do remain high.

Ryan also claimed the President Obama had promised to keep the factory open—but that's not true according to The Detroit News, USA Today, and TPM.

Bottom line: Without the benefit of facts, Ryan's story sounded compelling, but once you learn what really happened, you quickly realize Ryan was telling a tall tale that was just too perfect to be true. And with that kind of thing starting to become a pattern with Ryan, it's no wonder that Mitt Romney likes him so much.

12:37 PM PT (kos): To add—Ryan is INSISTENT that the plant closed because of bad energy policy. Hence, it was George W. Bush's energy policy that closed down that plant. So how is Mitt Romney's energy policy any different?

Re: What the fuck is wrong with Wisconsin?

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 5:30 pm

by Rspaight

Sheesh. Blaming any president for gas prices is always a bullshit attack.

And I thought the standard GOP line was that bailing out the auto companies was socialist waste. So now Obama's bad because he didn't bail them out *more*?

I do like the various factions of the Tea Party attacking each other, though. It's like the "Judean People's Front" gag in Life of Brian.

Re: What the fuck is wrong with Wisconsin?

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 2:06 pm

by Rspaight

Oh, and I'm sure you know this by now, but "mitt romney and paul ryan" is an anagram for "my ultimate ayn rand porn"

So much makes sense now.

Re: What the fuck is wrong with Wisconsin?

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 2:20 pm

by David R. Modny

It's going to be amusing today to see what kind of whopper the Romney-Ryan ticket attempts to put forth to try and distance Ryan from Akin and their original co-sponsored, "No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act" House Bill. The one that threw incest, molestation and statutory rape to the wind, while only exempting something that Ryan and Akin conjured up known as "forcible" rape.

Re: What the fuck is wrong with Wisconsin?

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 3:18 pm

by Rspaight

We should all thank Akin for pushing this issue to the top of the news cycle.

EDIT: Oh, by the way -- my sig is over four years old! It's finally come around to being topical again.

Re: What the fuck is wrong with Wisconsin?

On the other hand, state government is back under complete GOP control.

In the space of five months, Wisconsin has re-elected a conservative hero, Scott Walker, and a liberal icon, Barack Obama.

In the space of two years, it has elected its most conservative senator in decades (Ron Johnson) and the Senate’s first open lesbian (Tammy Baldwin).

In the space of four years, Obama and Walker have combined to win all four of their statewide races here – and none of them were close.

Welcome to Wisconsin, crusher of conservative dreams, dasher of liberal hopes, beacon to the right -- or maybe the left. Democrats have rarely had less power at the state level. Republicans haven’t won a race for president in almost 30 years.

MADISON, Wis. — Her state, just two years ago, elected a darling of the Tea Party to the Senate, displacing a Democratic mainstay. When the conservative governor, Scott Walker, stripped most state workers of bargaining rights, voters here rejected an effort to recall him from office.

And in 2006, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman passed with the support of a clear majority of Wisconsinites — the same electorate that on Tuesday voted for Representative Tammy Baldwin, making her the country’s first openly gay senator.

Ms. Baldwin’s hard-fought victory, in a bruising, $65 million race against a popular Republican opponent, was a testament to the unorthodox politics of a state whose ideological swings can, to outside observers, evoke whiplash.

But it was also a striking affirmation of Ms. Baldwin, 50, a soft-spoken but unflinching seven-term congresswoman who won over voters in her native state without moderating the starkly progressive views — including lonely votes against the invasion of Iraq and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a law that curbed commercial banks — that routinely rank her among the most liberal lawmakers in the country.